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Google, Amazon, Microsoft Reportedly Paid AdBlock Plus To Unblock
RoccamOccam writes with the following news from The Register: Internet giants Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Taboola have reportedly paid AdBlock Plus to allow their ads to pass through its filter software. The confidential deals were confirmed by the Financial Times, the paper reported today [Paywalled].
From the Register's article: Eyeo GmbH, the German startup behind Adblock Plus, said it did not wish to comment. So far more than 300 million users have downloaded its software, it said. The add-on is free to download, with Eyeo generating revenue through its "whitelisting" programme. Companies can request their ads to be unblocked as long as they comply with AdBlock's "acceptable ads" policy. Large companies pay a fee for the service.
'nough said.
"Companies can request their ads to be unblocked as long as they comply with AdBlock's "acceptable ads" policy. Large companies pay a fee for the service."
How is this news? Seriously, how?
Some people get AdBlock to avoid intrusive adverts. I don't see this being a problem for them.
However some, such as myself, use AdBlock as part of an anti-tracking solution. This concerns me more.
I'd assume (without further info) that this is about the "allow some non-intrusive advertising" checkbox you get in the filter options. It's on by default, but when you install adblock (as I did a few days ago) it one of the things you go through when the configuration dialog pops up.
It links to: https://adblockplus.org/en/acc...
It's not perfect in that it's on by default, but it's easy enough to disable. Perhaps they could improve it by tying this checkbox to your "do not track" preference?
Everyone running ad blocking software is not sustainable, since ads pay for a lot of stuff. People also don't want to have to directly pay for things (plus, could you imagine if every website was paywalled?)
Seems to me that the best solution is to just run unintrusive ads. People don't really mind ads all that much, they just hate it when they're noisy (literally and metaphorically) and get in the way
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
Its the ones that cover the whole screen, have someone who talks over the speakers, or force me to find a tiny hide button that I want blocked. So far, i have not found that Google, Microsoft, or Amazon do this. (SO FAR.....) Also, i run a site that uses Google Doubleclick for Publishing that houses some ads as part of the site's content. They are not obtrusive and you would mistake it for the site's content. Adblock will block them though, even though they are just in-house ads for my own content on the same site.
Basic blocking: https://github.com/gorhill/uBl...
More extensive blocking: https://github.com/gorhill/uMa...
Extensions are available for Chrome/Chromium. It seems Firefox is (getting) supported as well.
I've been using it for years - from very early states - and I know within seconds if adblock is not installed on chrome, firefox and opera and android via adaway.
If adblock leaks an ad, we get the ad and block it manually, and also there are lists that are not directly under adblock plus , adblock chrome's control. The lists are pulled from and maintained separately than the blockers so Im not sure how this can go on for very long. It would be glaringly obvious over time if ads get through and the lists will be updated.
If any one of the adblockers "betrays" the community with exceptions in the code, we have plenty of places to defect to.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Adblock block ads.
Adblock whitelists ads when companies pay. (and that is known)
Some companies took them up on the offer and payed Adblock so they were whitelisted.
So what makes this newsworthy again?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
*I* wasn't paid for *my* time!
Sure you are. You are being paid in content, software, etc... You aren't getting nothing in return, you
are getting the priviledge of using facebook, slashdot, google, etc... If a large percentage of users all
started using ad blocking software then places like google, slashdot, and facebook would either have
to start charging or even worse start doing secret product placement. I much prefer ads that I know
are ads to tainted content and tainted search results.
I'm also a Firefox user, with AdBlock. I disabled the acceptable ads checkbox so I don't see any ad (I would have noticed). If AdBlock makes any money out of the ads companies, good for them. If they force acceptable ads to everybody, I'll move to something else. uBlock seems to be as good. There will always be something to block all ads. At worst the hosts file.
Faster, better, hackable and free. https://github.com/gorhill/uBl...
there's no place like ~
I use Adblock Edge. Used to use Adblock Plus before they started accepting bribes to cripple their own filters.
I use ad blockers because I DO NOT WANT TO SEE ADS. Period. I hate ads. To me there is NO SUCH THING as an acceptable ad.
Corporatism != Free Market
Hey, these companies put their stuff up freely available on the internet, and make no attempt to block us.
If they think that magically confers some obligation on us to look at every damned ad their website serves, they're full of crap. How many times to ads end up serving malware? Do they take any responsibility for that? Or just say "wasn't us"?
They may think they have some magic click-through license, but I'll be damned if I think all of those analytics and ad companies should have access to all that. I'm not conducting a transaction with those companies, I'm viewing your publicly available website which makes no effort to keep me out.
Not my problem about your ads.
Don't want me to block your ads, make your site subscription based and block me out entirely.
But don't act like I'm somehow ripping you off. Since their privacy policy is crap, we're just enacting our own.
Scorecard research, doubleclick, quantserve, and literally HUNDREDS of other companies ... their product is information about me. But I never signed up for that.
So if some billion dollar media company wants to piss and moan that I'm not watching their ads ... fuck 'em, stop me.
I rank this crap right up there with "by reading this billboard you agree to have this 3rd party company rifle through your wallet". Yeah, no, there's as many as 30 third parties on a lot of sites ... and I've signed a contract with NONE of them.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Correct me if I am wrong, but if someone creates a product that interferes with someone else’s business and then charges them a fee to stop interfering, isn’t that extortion?
I would not mind my browser sending out some kind of headers to specify my ad acceptance policy and even a few key words of goods and services I am interested in. But *I* should be the one who controls it. And the controls should be fine grained.
Something like:
(browser-ad-acceptance-policy) animation=no; flash=no; sounds=no; ad_to_payload_ratio looking_for=camcorder,auto_insurance,galapagos_island_tour;
(/browser-ad-acceptance-policy )
The add on or extension should enforce the policy on browser end when it can, without expecting good faith compliance from the web sites.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Your host file junk pretty much blocked me access to the internet, had to go in safe mode to get rid of it, so screw you.
Craziness in the ad space has all the feel of being a ginormous bubble. Companies who have a business model of selling banner ads via an app and have no other revenue sources seem especially precarious to the perception of advertising effectiveness. If at some point studies come out showing banner ads are as ineffective as I think they are (I think they are a net negative to most companies who use them) the rug could get pulled out from the whole mess.
People are getting trained to filter this stuff out left and right. I find myself avoiding google when I look for certain things because I know that if they are common I will have to wade through a page or more of paid up links that are mostly only tangentially related to what I am looking for. I can't recall the contents of any recent banner ads, and there are a number of sites I just don't visit on my ipad because they are so awful without AdBlock running.
How about a new Kickstarter campaign where we pool our money to buy up highway billboard space and put up pretty murals instead of ads?
this is the truth. Anyone who was using adblock plus before the sell out knows this and uses the fork, Adblock Edge, instead.
Abusive spam does not trustworthy make.
Get rid of Firefox and use Palemoon http://www.palemoon.org/ and then install AdBlock Latitude https://addons.palemoon.org/ex... You'll wonder what all the fuss is about after you wrestle your old UI back from Firefox and have all your ads blocked by a reputable organization (Palemoon) that won't sell out to the dark side like AdBlock Plus did. These two greedy companies need more people to jump ship and make a statement. Do your part. You'll be glad you did.
So you create a hosts-file-based ad blocking system, then proceed to shower Slashdot with adverts it can not block, but your competitors can, and don't see the joke?
I don't inherently have a problem with ads, not even with ads tailored to my personal preferences (which I would actually prefer over random ads). I'd even be willing to check a few boxes to mark my interests.
However, that's just not good enough for the marketing companies. They want flashy ads that distract from the page I'm reading, they want to track my every move, they want to sell my data, they want to run scripts on my computer, they want popups, popunders, redirects, accidental clicks, they would cheerfully ruin the user experience if it would get them one more click. And they don't want to check whether the ads their showing are links to scams, frauds, malware, or even if the ads themselves contain malware. They'll cheerfully commit outright fraud while pretending to be advertisers (eg "virus detected on your computer" style ads). And some websites have changed their design to have a little bit of text with mountains of ads, sometimes with a load-the-ads-first system, sometimes splitting a page's worth of content into 10 pages to show more ads, and generally treating advertizing companies as their customer and users as their product.
And so for my sanity I have to use AdBlock.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
It's actually pretty old news.
That being said, I don't recall ever seeing one of those acceptable ads due to the other measures I use like noscript/scriptsafe, so I can't really comment on how acceptable they are.
Log in or piss off.
This sounds completely consistent with 21st century business practices. Offer a service to do X, then accept money not to do X = without telling the people who are relying on it.
Suckers!
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
It's actually your adblocker pegging your CPU, hoss.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
I'm not telling them how to run their business ... I'm saying their business isn't my problem, and charity doesn't mean I'm willing to put up with the shady players who serve the ads.
Because those players I deem to be so utterly untrustworthy that if you depend on them for your revenue, you might as well sign up with organized crime.
Theft would imply I'm depriving them of something -- I'm not.
That argument is as asinine as the cable companies claiming I'm "stealing" by fast forwarding commercials ... sorry, wasn't going to buy those maxipads, don't give a crap .. and since every market got a different set of commercials, Crazy Bob's House of Used Poo doesn't have any meaningful copyright or skin in the game ... paying the cable company to air your ads doesn't make me beholden to you.
Similarly, doubleclick and all the othe shady players paying you for the privilege to put shit in my web browser doesn't place any obligation to me.
If these companies, with their FREE and PUBLICLY available websites think that somehow that means I should view and click all of their ads .. they're sorely mistaken.
Don't make it free and publicly available. And don't act like I owe you something.
Yup, I'm leaching your content that you're freely giving away, and I'm not clicking on your ads. In the same way when I fast forward through commercials ... I genuinely don't give a crap.
Their contract with me extends as far as an HTTP GET, which either works or it doesn't. And that's about as far as it goes.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Blocking ads is like blocking the revenue stream for those providing free content and services. I know I'll get flak for saying this. Fact is that it's the little guys that get hurt the most by this ad blocking service.
One could say that maybe their method of advertising is not efficient (compared to in video ads on Youtube) but it's what they have right now and it's not right for a company to be able to strip out what the site intended the viewer to see.
For those who will say that it ruins the user experience I say this to you: "Find another service for free"
obtrusive (adj.): noticeable or prominent in an unwelcome or intrusive way.
advertisement (noun): a paid announcement, as of goods for sale, in newspapers or magazines, on radio or television, etc.
oxymoron (noun): a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction
You misunderstand the definition of one of the words you are using.
hey i'm just saying that if my ti 999/4a booted up with advertisements or came with an on call pager that would wake me up in the middle of the night when there was a production down because my basic program from compute! suddenly crashed I might have made a different career choice.
APK always sees red
When people point out the '90s are dead
To him, spamming his HOSTS file
Is really not at all that vile,
Use it or you're dead!
Eventually it'll even be
A replacement for systemd
But don't you fret
'Cuz you can bet
It'll replace Windows registry
So sad, too bad, that those who boast
How good it is, they anonymous post
Because those "others" are just he
Hiding behind anonymity
Otherwise "they" would be toast.
And he attacks anyone
Who criticizes spamming he as done
He posts crap-floods filled with hate
Trying to intimidate
So now critics post anon.
Alexander P Kowalski
Do your worst, you will see
You're still a fool,
A royal tool,
You're hurting yourself, not me,
Burma Shave
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
you should be using noscript to block third party content.
ABP is really just to block inline youtube ads.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.